Our Farms
Located on Wolfe Island, just a ferry ride from downtown Kingston, Ontario. Our crops are grown over three acres in two separate fields. This allows us to rotate our crops to minimize pest and disease pressure as well as provide isolation to maintain our seed purity. Our sites are managed and our crops are grown organically and certified by Eco Cert. We are proud members of the National Farmers Union and the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario.
Our Focus
We place much emphasis on growing and offering you varieties that are well suited to our bio-region and that offer maximum flavour. We seek to inspire you to share a meal with family and friends from vegetables, herbs and flowers grown in your garden.
We're working to improve existing varieties to better perform in our region's climate and soils as well as develop new varieties of vegetables that are flavourful, productive and better suited for organic systems. We value collaboration and building connections and are energized by working with our fellow plant breeding partners through SeedWorks, our newly formed breeding club. Want to know more? Just ask! Annie is always happy to talk about it.
Our Farmers
Two of us make up Kitchen Table Seed House. We not only share the growing but the cooking and the eating too. In fact, it was around a kitchen table that we decided to join forces and put our skills, passion and knowledge together to offer you the best quality seeds we can produce from varieties we've come to love.
Kathy Rothermel - Kathy is a gardener, seed producer and mother.
A life-long love of the country and a desire to share that experience with her family lead her to move to a farm on Wolfe Island. Meeting local seed savers opened her world to the necessity of regional seed for the growth of a resilient and robust food system.
She is a founding member of the Kingston and Area Seed System Initiative (KASSI), a grower for the Ontario Vegetable Seed Producers Network and actively involved with the Eastern Canadian Organic Seed Growers Network.
Her belief in the importance of gathering together to share good food around the kitchen table has been a natural extension of her social and active family and community life.
Annie Richard - Annie is an eater, seed producer and budding plant breeder.
While in culinary school, Annie rounded out her experience with a summer farm internship where she discovered the incredible range and potential of flavour possibilities in the garden. She went on to learn on numerous farms, studied Sustainable Agriculture at Fleming College and worked at Kingston’s Heirloom Seed Sanctuary. These experiences reinforced her interest in producing and developing quality seed.
A growing knowledge of plant breeding and the ways it can best serve farmers and gardeners lead to her working under Dr. Michael Mazourek in the Plant Breeding department at Cornell University. Her current work to improve and develop varieties, with flavour at the forefront, is her central focus at Kitchen Table Seed House.
